Saara J. DeWalt

TL;DR: A biomass recovery map of Latin America is presented, which illustrates geographical and climatic variation in carbon sequestration potential during forest regrowth and will support policies to minimize forest loss in areas where biomass resilience is naturally low and promote forest regeneration and restoration in humid tropical lowland areas with high biomass resilience.

TL;DR: This study estimates the age and spatial extent of lowland second-growth forests in the Latin American tropics and model their potential aboveground carbon accumulation over four decades to guide national-level forest-based carbon mitigation plans.

TL;DR: Results have shown that their important contribution to total basal area and biomass can continue as the forest matures, even as the numbers of established lianas declines.

TL;DR: Significant effects of herbivores and fungal pathogens may be limited to particular habitats, and for Clidemia hirta, its absence from forest understory in its native range likely results in part from the strong pressures of natural enemies.

TL;DR: It is shown that most tree species are extremely rare, meaning that they may be under serious risk of extinction at current deforestation rates, and a methodological framework for estimating species richness in trees is provided that may help refine species richness estimates of tree-dependent taxa.